Friday, August 31, 2012

'Old Spice Guy' makes muscles play music

Wieden & Kennedy / Vimeo

Terry Crews mixes muscles and music with a new Old Spice video that lets users get a chance to play.

By Suzanne Choney

Watch out, "Old Spice Guy" Isaiah Mustafa. Terry Crews ? former NFL player and "Expendables" star? is muscling in on your success, playing music using his muscles?? yes, his muscles?? in an ad for the men's aftershave on Vimeo that has been played more than 1.7 million times in the last two days.

Not only does Crews use his muscles to trigger various instruments, but after the ad is over, viewers can use their own keyboards to control Crews' muscles and make their own "muscle-powered musical creations."

The clever "Muscle Music" ad campaign is by global ad agency Wieden + Kennedy. It first surfaced Aug. 23, but viewership has gone viral in the last 48 hours on Vimeo, where the after-show can be created.

"To promote the new Old Spice scent Danger Zone, Old Spice Muscleman Terry Crews does what no man has ever done before ? play a drum set using nothing but his flexing muscles," the ad agency says on its website.

"In addition to watching his historically important muscle powered performance, users also have the ability to use their keyboards to control Terry's muscles and create and share their own muscle-powered musical creations."

Or, as the firm noted on its blog:

Never has so much stupidity and technological breakthrough been combined into one thingy. It's the first ever fully interactive and sharable music video/player on Vimeo (or YouTube for that matter).

"Old Spice Muscle Music" also takes the marketing effort to Reddit, where Crews is taking questions from fans and viewers, for now.

One fan asked the star ? who also played Chris Rock's dad on the CW sitcom "Everybody Hates Chris" and U.S. President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho?in the Mike Judge movie "Idiocracy" ? and about how it is that he refuses to be typecast.

"I constantly get out of my comfort zone," he says. "Looking cool is the easiest way to mediocrity. The coolest guy in my high school ended up working at a car wash. Once you push yourself into something new, and whole new world of opportunities opens up. But you might get hurt. In fact you WILL get hurt. But amazingly when you heal ? you are somewhere you've never been." No question about that with "Old Spice Muscle Music."

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When five teenagers struck a goofy pose for a group photo in 1982, they never expected that 30 years later they would be sitting in the same spot making the same face. The friends, now in their late 40s, talk about why they made a pact to take the same picture again and again.